Meet Michael Ruben Offner

We were lucky to catch up with Michael Ruben Offner recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael Ruben, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

That was a rather long process.

When I was younger, I wanted to be an author and write books like the ones I grew up reading, books like Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Deltora Quest, etcetera. I would come up with stories and draw intricate maps for the worlds they take place in. At some point that goal changed, as I grew more interested in science and technology. By the time I hit high school, I was more interested in a career in science, and most of my creative dreams were put to rest. I ended up enrolling in a materials engineering degree in Germany.

But something changed before I went to college – a couple of friends in high school introduced me to Gravity Falls, and I slowly became a fan of animated shows. One day while procrastinating on homework, I drew Dipper Pines out of boredom, and noticed my drawing actually looked like the character. I remembered “wait, I can draw?” and started drawing more and more. I nicked my sister’s wacom tablet from when she went through a photography phase, and started learning digital art with Gimp, and then eventually Photoshop. At some point I watched a show I really didn’t like, and thought “Even I could do better than this. Wait. I COULD do better than this!”

That’s when I found my current primary career goal – telling stories through animation. The only issue was that I was studying engineering. One of my main flaws is that I’m very stubborn, and if I commit to something I tend to stick with it even when it starts to hurt me. Engineering wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore, but I felt I had to do it and the disconnect between where I was and where I wanted to be led to depression. It took a global pandemic and a serious talk with my family before I finally snapped out of it, dropped out and re-enrolled in a computer animation degree that would bring me closer to where I wanted to be.

I thrived there. I learned about every phase of production in 3D animation, I taught myself background illustration and character design, I learned how to model and texture and rig. I tried to specialize in backgrounds (I’ve uploaded a few here), but the curiosity that had originally led me to science led me to wander between the departments at animation uni as well.

Not specializing eventually worked out in my favor though – my jack-of-all-trades nature made me a good fit for the production coordinator position that I applied to after I graduated.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently, I work as an animation production coordinator at Studio Soi in Ludwigsburg, where “The Amazing World of Gumball” is produced. I’m primarily an assistant to the managing director of the studio, but I also manage the schedule for “The New Adventures of Pumuckl.” It is one of the uncreative jobs in the industry, as it is effectively just animation business management, but you’ll find most producers are creatives as well.

My job is to support the animators who work on the project, and to help keep production on schedule and alert my boss when things are starting to go off-course so that we can find solutions. If you’ve ever played an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, producers fill a role similar to Bards – we support our animators in their work, and we’re the party’s face when negotiating with clients and partners.

Ultimately my hope is to start my own studio some day, so that I can help tell the stories I like and help provide more jobs to artists, but for now I am at the beginning of my career and am trying to learn as much as I can before I start my own venture.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Hm. It’s a bit complicated to narrow it down to three, but I’ll try.

Persistence. My stubbornness is both a blessing and a curse. I don’t give up when things get hard, even when they get too hard – but when channeled towards the right thing, it’s a good quality to have. I will never stop trying, and as long as I don’t give up, I will get where I want to.

Storytelling. In production, our bread and butter is communication, and communication is storytelling. I have a giant gap on my resume where I studied the wrong thing and wasted several years of my life. I can frame that negatively like I just did, or I can say that I left engineering because I chose my own happiness. That is how I framed it in my interview, and according to my boss, that is what got me the job.

Privilege. This is probably going to be one of the less inspiring parts of this interview, but it’s the reality. I was born lucky. My family had the resources for me to still go to animation school after I dropped out of engineering. Others would have to have taught themselves while they worked a day job. My skill at languages allowed me to study in Germany, where university is nearly free. If my parents had stayed in the United States, I would not have that luxury. I was able to go to therapy, I could afford to go to networking events like Annecy, I never had to worry about being discriminated against because I’m white, cis and pass as straight.

Not having access to these privileges doesn’t bar you from entry in the animation industry – it’s very welcoming to people of all kinds – but larger systemic injustices mean that to achieve the same level of luck, less privileged people have to make sacrifices I did not have to. I do not mean to diss myself here. You cannot make it into the animation industry on luck alone, you need hard work and skill as a pre-requisite, and I put in the work. I hope to eventually help build a world where people have more equal opportunities. That’s why I intend to eventually co-found a studio with some friends of mine who are less privileged than I am. I want to help elevate stories from underrepresented people, to hopefully chip in a bit towards making the world a fairer place.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

It really depends.

I am a well-rounded master of none. I lack the in-depth specialized knowledge of everyone in a specific department at the studio I work at, so I cannot do their jobs at their level, but I know a bit about all of it. I can understand what they’re talking about when they describe a specific problem. While that makes me a decent candidate for production, it also makes me somewhat replaceable. There are a lot of people like me.

I would say, it really depends on what your goals are. If you know exactly what you want to be, go all in. If you want to be a 3D animator, ignore everything else at first. Do not model, do not rig, do not storyboard or design your own characters. Pick an existing rigged character and get very good at animating. If you want to be competitive, you need to be specialized.

If you don’t know exactly what your goals are, it’s okay to be more well-rounded, but it also means you need to be more open-minded about what you may do later, and you need to be a creative researcher. If you go through animation school doing a little bit of everything, you will have difficulty getting a specific job. If you open yourself up to supporting roles like production, or roles outside of the industry in games, 3D visualization for medicine and industry, or advertising, you’ll have better chances at finding work. And the better you are at storytelling, the better you’ll be able to spin your experience and profile as relevant to whatever job you apply to.

So if you want to be a jack-of-all-trades, make sure that you’re at least good at researching and storytelling, and that you’re open to taking a career path you never expected.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mikaeloffner.wixsite.com/michael-ruben-offner
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelrubenoffner/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-offner-542a021a6/